It’s the dog days of summer and things have clearly slowed down around here, with SD’ers in various foreign places enjoying themselves. Nothing jolts us up out of our slumber faster, though, than learning about the protest of the curators of the King Tut exhibit, currently on view at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

While any museum protest would be of interest to us, this one is particularly interesting as the organizers are claiming that curators of the exhibit have intentionally made King Tut whiter than he in fact was. Their demands are as follows:

Demand 1
The Franklin Institute must make a Public Apology for not properly representing King Tut as an African in the Golden Ages Exhibit and thus falsely representing KMT (Ancient Egypt) as non-African .

Demand 2
The Franklin Institute must develop and display a Historical, Factual, and Scientific Exhibit of the African foundation and identity of Dynastic KMT.

LA’s best museum-on-top-of-a-3-mile-trolley-ride just got pwn3d, agreeing to hand over 40 antiquities to Italy. The Eye-talians claim the historic artworks, including a sculpture from the 5th century BC depicting Aphrodite, were plundered from their soil by the evil Getty.Â The statue depicts a “cult deity” goddess, and not the cult drum ‘n’ bass producer Aphrodite, who produced such hits as “Luniz – I got 5 on it (jungle remix)” in the mid-90s.

In similar news, the Olive Garden is returning its recipe for its cult dish “Tour of Italy,” which features cuisine plundered from several parts of the boot-shaped nation: “Homemade lasagna, lightly breaded chicken parmigiana and creamy fettuccine alfredo.”

What happens to a catalogue when its museum is blown to bits? It becomes a price guide for thieves! Now you too can own your own rare edition of this necessary black market guide, the 1974 Afghanistan National Museum catalogue.

Over the past twenty-five years, the Kabul Museum has been bombed, burned, and looted. Published in 1974, this catalogue remains the definitive record of the Museum prior to these indignities. Many of the objects depicted in the book are now lost to the art world – either destroyed, or illegally in the secretive hands of cultural poachers and private collectors around the world. The author herself has recently acknowledged that this sadly has become a veritable shopping guide for international art thieves.